“You’re a genius, Mr. Reeves,” she said when he had finished.
“I’m afraid it’s Carmichael that does all the clever work,” he admitted. “Only it’s so difficult to get him to keep up his interest in any subject, he always branches off to something else.”
“It’s most exasperating to think that I must actually have been on the same train with my husband, and not noticed anything,” said Miss Rendall-Smith. “Now, let’s see, which part of the train did I come on? Oh, it was the corridor part, I know, because I remember finding I had got into a smoker, and changing my carriage while the train was going. I was rather early for the train, so of course I shouldn’t have seen anybody getting into the Binver slip behind.”
“Did Davenant by any chance see you off?”
“Yes, he did.”
“What sort of journey did you have?”
“Oh, we crawled. You know what this line is when there’s a fog on. I never can see why there should be any danger, but we stopped at nearly all the signals. And now you mention it, I remember we did stop just at that curve of the line, a little way before Paston Whitchurch.”
“You didn’t see anybody you knew getting out of the train at Binver?”
“No, I didn’t notice anybody. But then, I had to go to the Parcels Office about something, so I didn’t go out with the crowd. Oh, it’s maddening to think I’ve been so little use.”
“Never mind, I dare say it might have put us off on a false scent if you had seen anybody.”
“Mr. Reeves, I think I ought to tell you one other thing, though I dare say you will think it is just my fancy. I have a sort of feeling that I am being watched.”
“Being watched?”
“Yes. When I took the train to come over to you yesterday, it was rather empty, as these Saturday trains are, and I noticed one of my fellow-passengers, a man who was quite a stranger to me. The curious thing was that he came back from Oatvile by the same train too, and I’m nearly certain, although this may have been just fancy, that I saw the same man watching me from the other side of the street when I went out this morning to go to church.”
“This is rather serious. Do you know of anybody who had a grudge against you as well as against your husband?”
“Honestly, I can’t think of anybody; you see, our lives have lain so far apart lately. No, I think it’s probably just a coincidence; I was only going to suggest that, if I saw this man again, perhaps I might telephone to you?”
“Please do. Just send me word that you’ve seen him again and I’ll come over straight in my car. Then perhaps we shall be able to have a better look at him.”
Reeves drove away very thoughtful. Was it possible that the same enemy who had murdered her husband was on the widow’s track too? Or was she psychic, and did echoes of the dead man’s personality follow her? Certainly one might have expected Brotherhood to rest unquietly in his grave. His grave—would some fresh inspiration come to Reeves, perhaps, if he paid a visit to the grave in Paston Oatvile churchyard? He was half ashamed of the thought, and yet … it could do no harm. The evening was a fine one; there was no need to be back early at the dormy-house. Instead of taking the London road, which was the shortest way home, he struck out along the winding country lane that connected the two Pastons. In a few minutes he had drawn up at the lychgate, and was finding his way among the gravestones.
The sudden gasp of a harmonium surprised him—of course, they were at evening service. What was that tune? “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” wasn’t it? He went up to the porch; it is an almost irresistible temptation to listen when sound comes out from a building into the open. … Yes, that was the hymn, most rustically sung by a congregation that sounded chiefly female, but with the one inevitable male voice dominating all, very loud and tuneless. Here in the porch you got a sort of quintessential effect of Sunday evening service in a country church: the smell of oil lamps, a glimpse of ugly deal pews, Sunday clothes, tablets on the wall in memory of dead virtues and hypocrisies. Yes, it was finishing now:
So with my waking thoughts
Bright with Thy praise,
Out of my stony griefs
Beth‑hel I’ll rai‑haise.
So by my woes to be
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nea‑rer‑er to Thee—
and then the penetrating Amen for which the best efforts of the singers seemed to have been reserved. There was a rustle and a shuffling as the erect forms became sedentary, and then, with sudden clearness, Marryatt’s voice giving out the text.
There was no doubt what Marryatt was at—it seemed a very embarrassing theme he had chosen. He was working up his congregation to derive a lesson from the tragic suddenness of Brotherhood’s end; in the midst of life, he reminded his hearers, they were in death; thence he would proceed to refute Brotherhood’s own arguments of less than a fortnight ago as to the survival of human personality. It was a thoughtful sermon, but on sufficiently obvious lines. “We see around us a great deal of carelessness, a great deal of indifference, a great deal of positive unbelief, and we ask ourselves, do we not? whether after all the lessons we learned at our mother’s knee were not just old wives’ fables, good for us when we were children, but something that manhood would outgrow. We ask ourselves, do we not? whether after all the story of our life will be continued elsewhere, whether after all there is a crown to be gained. And we persuade ourselves, perhaps, or
